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Introduction. Post-operative pain con-trol improves surgical outcome and many hospitals created multidisciplinary teams, called “Acute Pain Services” (APS). We col-lected APS data on 10,760 adult patients over a five year period, including compli-cations, side effects and patient satisfac-tion.Methods. Data on patients managed by APS in a high surgical-volume university hospital over a 5-year period were col-lected and analyzed. Data included demo-graphic characteristics, primary analgesic modality, adjuvant analgesic treatment, type of surgical procedure, Visual Ana-logue Scale, and analgesia-related side-effects and complications.Results. Patient controlled analgesia with morphine was used in 4,992 surgical pa-tients while epidural analgesia was used in 3,687 surgical patients and 1,670 pregnant women for delivery analgesia. A total of 411 patients received other forms of analgesia. No epidural haematoma was observed. A single case of respiratory depression oc-curred in an elderly patient using the pa-tient controlled analgesia system. Acetami-nophen was the most frequently adjuvant drug prescribed. Postoperative nausea and vomiting was the most frequent analgesia-related side effect. Visual Analogue Scale at rest and on movement was low on day one (0.84±1.15 and 2.05±1.67) and decreased thereafter with epidural analgesia associ-ated with better pain control following hip and liver surgery, and with less postop-erative nausea and vomiting (5.0%) when compared to morphine patient controlled analgesia (7.2%).Conclusions. An APS, with daily postop-erative visits, permits adequate post-oper-ative pain control without serious adverse events. Epidural analgesia was associated with less postoperative nausea and vom-iting and had at least similar pain control than morphine patient controlled analge-sia.

Central venous pressure (CVP) is used as a marker of cardiac preload to control intraoperative blood loss in open hepatectomies, while its reliability in laparoscopy is less certain. The aim of this randomized prospective trial was to evaluate the outcome of laparoscopic resections performed with stroke volume variation (SVV) or CVP monitoring.All candidates for laparoscopic liver resection were assigned randomly to SVV or to CVP groups. Outcome was evaluated included conversion rate, cause of conversion, intraoperative blood loss, need for transfusions, length of surgery and postoperative results.Ninety consecutive patients were enrolled: both SVV and CVP groups included 45 patients each and were comparable in terms of patient and disease characteristics. A reduced rate of conversion was recorded in the SVV compared to the CVP group (6.7% and 17.8% respectively, p = 0.02). Blood loss was lower in the SVV group (150 mL), compared to the CVP group (300 mL, p = 0.04). Morbidity, mortality, length of stay and functional recovery were comparable. On multivariate analysis, lesion location, extent of hepatectomy and type of cardiac preload monitoring were associated significantly to risk of conversion.SVV monitoring in laparoscopic liver surgery improves intraoperative outcome, thus enhancing the benefits of the minimally-invasive approach and fast-track protocols.